


The Cruellest Curse

by thefourteenthworld



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Dark, Dark Magic, House elf abuse, Implied Violence, One Shot, Pre-Canon, Pre-War, Short One Shot, Slow Reveal, Spell Design, Young Bellatrix, house-elves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 19:57:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9088009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefourteenthworld/pseuds/thefourteenthworld
Summary: Bellatrix Black has heard rumours of a new Force contained in the Ministry. She is determined to exploit it, creating a Curse which will destroy the victim completely, whilst allowing her to watch their slow torture.And make it she will...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys, this is my first fic so please be kind/constructive if you can.  
> TW Elf abuse, implicit violence, depictions of blood, mentions of knives, sadism (and not the fun kind).  
> Hope you enjoy!

She wanted to create the Cruellest Curse.  
Never would a Slytherin like her shame her House for lack of ambition. She knew she was a witch of prodigious skill and talent. At fifteen, she was ready to carve her name into the world, and lick the blood off the wound, relishing the metallic taste on her lips. She would delight as it scarred there forever, emblazoned in Prophet headlines, history books, memories. They would speak her name alongside her Lord’s in a tone almost as hushed. She would work for His honour, and her own.

She’d heard whispers from the parlour as she’d crouched, Disillusioned, on the marble staircase. There had been far too many important visitors lately, and she knew something was afoot. She’d heard too much under the guise of taking coats and performing curtseys to the important guests, every inch the proper Pureblood. She’d lurked longer than necessary, ears straining at whispers, hidden in the manor’s nooks and crannies. She’d talk to the portraits, who all refused to tell her what the Unspeakables had discussed with her father over dinner, despite her creative threats to disembowel, blind, deface or dishonour them. They’d known her since she was a little girl. Even then she would have made good on her threat, but they knew they were far too strongly warded to worry about it. She’d tricked and tortured the house-elves into telling her. When her blood authority hadn’t been enough to get them to disobey a direct order, her wand and silver knives had proved better persuaders than her silver tongue. It was no concern of hers if the miserable creatures had to punish themselves afterwards. She took after her father in enjoying the display; a trait which he encouraged. The two Blacks shared an identical gleam in their dark eyes, and a sadist’s thirst for suffering. Her weak sisters refused to watch at all. The elves’ howls of pain punctuated the classical music, sounding even sweeter than her father’s favourite Bach. Quite the performance, really. All the better that it was real. 

Real, if not permanent. Oh, the Cruciatus was plenty good for causing pain, but far too temporary. The victim would scream blue murder, and twitch for ten minutes, but it wasn’t lifelong. It was too pedestrian – physical pain could be endured. One simply had to grit their teeth until the caster’s magic wore out, or the pain wore off. Whichever happened first, and with the bunch of weaklings who generally used it, the former.  
What she’d been able to piece together from Rookwood’s regular visits was thus. There was a room, hidden in the bowels of the Ministry, protected by the maze of the Department of Mysteries and every enchantment they could throw at it. Of course he’d left a few loopholes for the rapidly rising Dark Lord to exploit. This force was rumoured to be the most powerful on Earth. The distilled version had been sapped from dreamers and lunatics, from the starry-eyed mental patients to the drunks that littered Knockturn Alley. It was rumoured to be the purest, most untameable variety. It was known to have a hand in several of the more powerful spells that the old fool Dumbledore was so fond of casting. Rookwood campaigned for its collection on the grounds of ‘research’, but he knew as well as she did that the force was every bit a weapon. A weapon she would learn to exploit.  


She was creating a curse worse than the Unforgivables combined. The victim would be a husk, a shadow of their former selves. Not with the calm oblivion of the Dementor’s Kiss or the gentle slip beyond the Veil, but with blazing, invisible agony consuming them from the inside out. Not with the gentle contentment of the Imperius Curse, the luxury of being relieved of one’s will, one’s decisions, one’s consequences. Not even with the blistering fury of the Cruciatus Curse, which could throb and sting and burn and freeze; break bones, rip joints and ligaments, and stab the softest skin all at the same time. The only awareness one had under the Cruciatus was of the purely physical, and the wish that it would stop. No, this curse would be more insidious. It would steal into their soul, pick the locks on their boxes of memories, and curl up in their chest. This curse would be the perfect criminal – the victim would never notice until it held their bloodied heart, wet and warm, and squeezed it in its grip. This curse could not be tamed, nor controlled. Ignoring it would only make it stronger. No magic alive could erase or cancel it, strung as it was like barbed wire, rigged around the victim’s soul. Tripwires would lay inside their mind, triggered to explode at random. Their bodies would no longer be their own, feeling the touch of ghostly fingers, longing for it, wishing it. Only a few would fall quickly to the cold caress of the Reaper, for the spell itself could flare hope in the darkest of places.

Everything would become excruciating detail. They would be awake, and aware, as they watched their lives fall into ruins; collapsed structures haunted by the shadows of their former selves. A grin spread wide across her dark features. This was going to be fun.  
She wanted punishment. Permanent punishment. She wanted the spell to rip someone apart from the inside. It would detonate inside their ribcage like a bomb – the first shock, nuclear in its magnitude. It would then spread – arterial, untamed, lurking in the cracks of their broken heart. Bad blood would taint every happy memory. A glimpse of a photograph could send a sharp pain to the chest even years later. The wrong song on the radio would send even the strongest into tears. Sobs would rack and shake a body brittle from the curse that could cause a sickness so supreme that food lost its taste and appeal. A familiar smell could cause the victims knees to weaken, clutching the nearest piece of furniture for support. They would rot – slowly. Even their magic could be sapped, weakened, by it. Eventually, if left unabated, or untamed by the will of the victim, it would cause death. 

The malady would seem temporary, at first. The utter strength of the force could cause the victim to shout from rooftops, travel across continents, abandon their lives in the singular pursuit of one thing. The madness would abate, slowly, but the force of the feeling would stay. A simple turn of phrase could cause an aftershock in the victim’s chest – their heart pumping uncontrollably, beads of sweat appearing. All composure, all dignity, could be lost at any moment. She wanted to break her victims into shards, rip ribbons from their skin, and have the whole injury invisible to the naked eye, apart from the telltale twitching of a limb when the curse was triggered. Which could be by anything, really. 

The tortures were limited only by the victim’s imagination.

It could cause sleepless nights, or sleeping through entire weeks. It could cause pitiful pining, or rash, brash action. One victim would wake from nightmares, gasping, grasping at the air beside them. Another would lie listless on the floor, unable to even count clouds. It could arrest and paralyse the most powerful, or make them hurtle head-first into chaos with no second thoughts. It was the power of second-chances and sacrifices, the self-inflicted disregard for self-interest. Suicidal, and extremely unbecoming. Alternately, it could flare up an obsession so powerful that it would lay waste to the world for the sake of one small mercy.  
The victim could not hope to remove the curse, merely learn to live with it. No Potion in the world could cure it, although a few could mimic its symptoms. Every summoned Healer would be left scratching their heads. More importantly, no one would see that the victim was in fact a victim; there would be no evidence that a curse had been cast at all. Other than a lingering trace of powerful magic, whose signature would be the same as the victim’s own. 

Her quill paused in its scratching, several feet of parchment and some impressive diagrams later. The grandfather clock had long since struck three, and her candle was little more than flickering wax in its holder.

She gave a tired, twisted grin. 

She had done it. 

The invisible force in the Department of Mysteries had been mimicked by her wand and quill. Its secret had been tapped. She had ravaged, drawn and quartered that oh-so-mysterious thing, robbed it of its beauty and pinned it down like a butterfly, trapped in a glass cage forevermore. This was better than Fiendfyre – ancient magic, but untraceable, undetectable, invisible. Still capable of wreaking the same amount of destruction, but inside, instead of outside, a human being.  
“Usque Admortem!” She screeched, feeling the resulting flare of magic from her walnut wand. The dragon heartstring seemed to pulse at its core.  
She had created the Cruellest Curse. Love until death. 

Now all she needed was a victim.


End file.
